early childhood

When Goodstart Early Learning intervened in 2009 to clean up the mess left in the wake of the ABC Learning collapse, the early childhood education and care landscape looked grim. Now, with more than 650 services under its not-for-profit brand, the future is looking bright. Ingrid Maack reports. Continue Reading →

Rattler had a front-row seat as more than 200 members turned out at the Sydney Masonic Centre to hear Kate Ellis, Minister for Early Childhood and Childcare, and Adrian Piccoli, NSW Minister for Education, tackle the sector’s hottest topics.

Rattler talks to a DEC preschool, a community-based service and private long day care centre about the long and winding road to quality improvement. By Ingrid Maack.

The past three years has been an era of rapid change and reflection with children’s services using the reform agenda as a road map to raise quality and drive continuous improvement. Even while still in its draft form, many services began engaging with the National Quality Framework (NQF)—turning the mirror inwards, so to speak, and sparking a spirit of self-study and reflection that is effectively reshaping the sector.

In a female-dominated profession known for employing women in their childbearing years, family-friendly staffing arrangements are a priority at the University of New South Wales’ three long day care centres—Kanga’s House, The House at Pooh Corner and Tigger’s Honeypot.

Jemma Carlisle, general manager of Early Years@UNSW University Services, says educators at the recently amalgamated group of UNSW services are offered flexible work arrangements including 36-weeks paid maternity leave (for staff employed for fives years or more) and 26 weeks for staff employed for less than five years.

Excursions are valuable for everyone — children, educators and the community. Stepping outside the centre gate is not only an opportunity for children to see the world but also for the world to see what children’s services do. Ingrid Maack reports.

These days it is rare to see young children walking hand-in-hand in our streets and public spaces. As young children spend more hours inside children’s services and fewer services travel beyond the centre gate, children are becoming less visible in our communities.

Have NSW regulators succeeded in preserving our state’s higher standards for early childhood education and care services and how do children in other states and territories fare? Lisa Bryant lifts the lid on the new National Regulations.

The dominant belief in NSW has long been that the requirements demanded of NSW services were higher than those demanded of early education and care services in other states. The requirement for qualified early childhood teachers in all centre-based services bigger than 29 places, for example, is often cited as the best example of why we needed to ensure that NSW did not lose out when national regulations were framed.

On the brink of a mining boom, the town of Mudgee is questioning how its fossil fuel-driven future will reshape the early childhood education landscape. Ingrid Maack visits Mudgee Preschool—one of the biggest early education and care services in NSW.

When I grow up I want to be a miner’, reads the text on a child’s artwork featuring a smiling stick figure with a miner’s lamp and a bag full of coal. The artwork hangs on the wall of a gallery in an exhibition, themed ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, organised by staff and children at Mudgee Preschool.

Quality Area 5 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) focuses on respectful and equitable relationships between educators and children. Dr Leonie Arthur explores why educator–child interactions should always be respectful, responsible and reciprocal.

Relationships aren’t static; each day, our interactions shape and reshape them’ (Casper & Theilheimer, 2010, p.80). How do your interactions with children shape your relationships with them? Are there changes you can make that will strengthen these relationships?

Alongside the global trend towards risk aversion is a growing group of people fighting for a child’s right to feel ‘the knot in the stomach’— that feeling of anticipation and exhilaration when taking risks during play. One such person is Scottish educator and founder of Nature Kindergartens, Claire Warden.

Risk taking should be part of childhood. We learn through the point where we feel challenged. The feeling of having a knot in your stomach is the place where you feel out of your comfort zone.

When you are concerned about a child in your care, how do you know if there is a potential mental health issue? Traditionally, early childhood educators have had little training in understanding mental health… until now.

There is growing awareness and a large body of brain development research that suggest the foundations of mental health are shaped in the early years. However, it is thought that fewer than half of the children who need professional help for mental health problems access the mental health system and get the help they need. (Starr, Campbell & Herrick, 2002.)

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